LWM meets Chris DiBona

Four hundred years from now, Earth is a shadow of her former self. On
August 24th, 2202, a near calamitous strike from a planetary fragment sent 12
billion souls into backup and made extinct hundreds of thousands of animal and
plant species.

CIO, CTO & Developer Resources

So begins Rekonstruction from Damage Studios, the first massively multiplayer
online game (MMOG) that is designed to support over 1,000,000 concurrent users.
Dee-Ann LeBlanc, LWM's gaming indusry editor, recently had the chance
to discuss Rekonstruction with Chris DiBona, cofounder of both Konstrux
Technologies and Damage Studios.

LWM: When people hear the name Chris
DiBona, it's usually in the context of Slashdot or one of a dozen other Linux
writing or techie venues. Looking through your "About Me" page there's nothing
in here that screams, "This man will cofound a gaming company one day." Is it
every little boy's dream to build (or is it play?) games for a living? How did
you end up here?Chris DiBona:
Boredom, mostly. At the time my cofounder and partner at Damage, Tony Guntharp,
approached me about this idea he had for Rekonstruction, I was initially a
little cold on the idea of doing both another startup and thought that I was
likely unqualified to market and manage such a company. I thought about it for a
few hours, and then, over the next day or so found I was more excited about the
challenge of both writing and marketing such a game than I had been in a very
long time.

When Tony and I first talked, I was still working for Slashdot as an editor,
which is a pretty fun thing, and I think that I was pretty good at that. I had
posted some 700+ stories and written about 300 polls for the site over the year
I had worked there. I have to admit I thought that I was getting a little burned
out on the highly event-driven nature of working for Slashdot, so when this
opportunity presented itself, I was poised to take it seriously. Running a game
company really hadn't been on my short list of "Things to do after VA/OSDN," but
when I realized some of the people I could get involved in the project and the
exciting technical and marketing challenge that creating and attracting
subscribers to such a game represents, I really had to do it in the end.

LWM: Tell us a bit about this MMORPG
(massively multiplayer online role-playing game). Where will it fit in the
market amongst its projected competitors?DiBona: Rekonstruction is set 400 years in the
future on an Earth devastated by 200 years of the cumulative aftermath of a
large-scale asteroid strike on planet Earth on August 24th, 2202. Earth is still
recognizable as such, but most of humanity was wiped out and sent into backup on
that date. The overall point of Rekonstruction is to rebuild and recivilize
Earth. We've written a lot about the backstory and overall game on our Web site,
http://www.rekonstruction.com, and your
readers should check that out to get a feel for the backstory and concept art
and other visuals that we are serving up for future players there. (And sign up
for our mailing list!)

As to the market for such a game, we are marketing Rekonstruction to the
hard-core MMORPG player; specifically those who we feel are not currently being
served well in the science fiction genre. There are a great number of fantasy
MMORPGs out there, and while we felt we could compete adequately in that space,
we felt that the fantasy thing had basically been done and will be a mess for
newcomers for some time. Also, no one has done a near-term (in science fiction
terms, 400 years in the future is still pretty near term) science fiction
MMORPG, with the few offerings being tens of thousands of years in the future,
so their worlds end up being really just fantasy MMORPGs with lasers or space
operas.

We also think that using Earth as the playing surface brings with it some
real affinity for our future subscribers and allows us to perhaps further blur
the lines between reality and the game world than we would otherwise be able to.
I think that people will identify more with San Francisco in Rekonstruction than
Rubi-ka (in Anarchy Online) or Norrath (Everquest), and this will anchor their
myth in the real world in a way that others can't currently do. I don't really
think you want me to go into my annoying lecture on how narrative for MMORPGs is
completely different than for first person shooters or real-time strategy games
or regular fiction, but designing an overall narrative is something that we take
very seriously. We see it as being one of the key differentiators for
Rekonstruction.

LWM: In the non-MMORPG world, the
games with thriving communities are driven by the ability to do Mods and apply
other customizations (such as supplying graphics for logos, textures for
clothes, and so on). No one has done this in the MMORPG market yet (that I'm
aware of). Have you considered it?DiBona: We have, and we provide it in some limited
form in our game. This is fraught with difficulties, and managing the provision
of such tools in a collaborative environment represents a very difficult
balancing act between gamer and game.

At launch we will provide the ability for the players to create new
settlements, create new teleportation links, and more.

LWM: How are you working to appeal to
more than just the teenage male demographic? Recent surveys point out that
adults - and even women as an individual group - play games more than
boys, and yet everyone's aiming for that one demographic. Please tell me there
won't be overly anatomically "correct" females and Ken doll males (who are
anything but anatomically correct).DiBona: I think about this a lot; I don't think
that the female demographic (which is represented well in a number of MMORPGs)
is served particularly well. I prefer to think in terms of providing players
with the choice of making beautiful, unique, and attractive characters. I think
that there is no reason to not provide future subscribers the ability to create
attractive female or male avatars, but I also want them to be able to create
stocky, rangy, or otherwise interesting characters.

Character model creation is actually a very exciting area in MMORPGs today;
for instance, the things you can do now for facial and other expressions are
pretty neat. I remember telling our concept artist just a month ago "be sure to
give me a fat blacksmith looking fellow," but that's another story.

LWM: What is the game play going to be
like? What kinds of in-game activities will characters be able to do, and
advance by? Many people in MMORPGs like a heavy social component, for example.
Game balance has proven a huge problem in many of the MMORPGs I've tried.
Usually the only effective way to advance is by killing things or going on
endless, repetitive quests, no matter how much thought the developers tried to
put into offering crafting skills and so on.DiBona: MMORPGs without social components aren't
MMORPGs. When you talk about the repetitive nature of quests and others, that's
clearly something we'd like to avoid, and we think we have cool ways of avoiding
the boring part of the leveling grind. Balance, as you note, is key. Can you
have a character competent enough without some kind of "work" to get to that
level? Is that what you want in a game? It is in our interest to have some kind
of learning curve so that people feel competent in the control of their
character, but how do we do that without creating boredom. We think we have a
handle on this part of the game, but it's going to need serious oversight for as
long as the game continues.

As to advancement without combat, we'll offer ways to accomplish this, but
Rekonstruction is a game, and character advancement will be an important part of
it.

LWM: I've read some fascinating papers
on "game economy." How do you intend to tackle the many problems that come in
here, like in-game inflation and devaluation, and out-of-game people selling
characters and more on eBay?DiBona:
In-game inflation and deflation is a much bigger problem than extra-game trading
of characters and items. Since our game will not have shards, we will not have a
lot of the quality-control problems that our competitors have with extra game
sales. We will set up an escrow system internal to the game for quality control
and make it clear that selling items outside the game can be tricky for people.
For extra-game sales, we'll likely charge 50 cents for placing the item in
escrow pending sale, that way people can say "see the escrow report at such and
such link" in their auction. This will significantly reduce the support load
that such sales represent.

LWM: You say that you're using solely
Linux on the back end. How did you come to that decision? Was it a no-brainer
for you since you've got so much experience in Linux? Have other MMORPGs done
this before?DiBona: Actually, Linux
is quite popular in the space, as are open source databases like Postgres and
mySQL. Also, the cost structure in the game industry is such that using
commercial operating systems isn't really a good idea. They cost so much and
Linux delivers so much, as you know. Also, really, we're all Linux people at
Damage.

LWM: How are you implementing the back
end? Clusters? Server farm? COWs?DiBona: We'll be using a cluster architecture with
software of our own design. We're not using grid or pvm/mpi technology, favoring
our own back-end technology.

LWM: Your site says that the whiz-bang
feature is going to be the ability to support one million concurrent users. What
is required to accomplish this?DiBona: Well, we actually don't expect to have
that many players for some time, so we're not going to buy that level of
capacity. We have a lot of experience with clusters, mind you (Tony created
SourceForge, I used to work for Tandem, etc...), so we know how to manage that
kind of growth, explosive or steady.

We really want a game without artificial boundaries for the players, so
providing them with a seamless experience is very important to us; having many
shards we think detracts from the playability of a game and restricts the
possibility of growth.

LWM: Are you talking about on a single
server, or on a massive collection of separated world servers? Will players be
able to interact among folks on the other servers?DiBona: From the players' perspective it is one
game, one Earth, one world. So interaction is seamless for players.

LWM: You say that there will be a
Linux client, but not immediately. Could you explain the decision process that
forces this approach, and what specific issues you expect to face when porting
the client to Linux?DiBona:
Basically, hard-core gamers are fine with rebooting or using a transgaming style
emulation technology, so until we can justify the added cost of maintaining
another client platform, that client won't be supported natively. Support for
Linux isn't really that difficult, especially when you consider that we will
likely be supporting OS X soon after launch of the Windows client. The problem
is that there is a cost, and unless the people on that platform are only going
to play the game if it is offered under Linux number enough to pay off the
ongoing investment in the Linux client, then we cannot initially justify the
cost of supporting Linux directly out of the gate.

The other problem with Linux and gaming is sound - I wish that Linux sound
was better.

That said, we clearly are all Linux people, so we want to support Linux,
despite the financial and marketing realities of gamers on Linux, so we likely
will. it's a matter of time and how successful the game is on other platforms.

LWM: Numbers are starting to show that
Linux might be gaining over the Macintosh in desktop use. If the gain continues,
will you reverse the OS X and Linux client rollouts? (Or at least consider
it?)DiBona: If the number of gamers
using Linux on their desktop surpasses the number of gamers who are using the
Mac as a desktop OS full time, then sure, we'll consider it.

LWM: Will the OS X and Linux clients
cost extra?DiBona: If you mean:
Will the Windows version cost $34 and the Mac/Linux versions cost more? Then no.

If you mean, will they eventually all ship on the same DVD? Maybe.

If you mean, will users be able to download the Linux or Mac part of the
client if they have already bought the Windows DVD? Then likely.

One thing to point out - our game will likely ship with too much data to
allow for a download, so no matter what, people will have to order a copy of the
game from their retailer or from our Web site.

LWM: What lessons have you learned
from studying what other people have done, both in MMORPGs in general and in
anything involving Linux and games?DiBona: What a question! We have learned so much
from EQ, AO, EVE, and the rest. We really couldn't even begin to answer that
without taking up the rest of your magazine's space. With regards to Linux, I'd
just like to reiterate what I've been saying for more than five years now: Linux
is the only way to go if you are serious about your server. With the exception
of some very specialized serving needs that can only be served by the Tandems
and IBMS of the world, Linux is it.

Dee-Ann LeBlanc has been involved with Linux since 1994. She is the author of 12 books, 130 articles, and has more of both coming. She is a trainer, a course developer - including the official Red Hat online courseware at DigitalThink - a founding member of the AnswerSquad, and a consultant.

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